


Be and Be not Afraid

by karrenia_rune



Category: 100 Years-Five for Fighting(song)
Genre: Fic or Treat Meme, Gen, Gift Exchange, Inspired by Music
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-06
Updated: 2016-06-06
Packaged: 2018-07-12 16:48:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7114078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karrenia_rune/pseuds/karrenia_rune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As an adult with two kids of her own a young woman named Sally comes back to her roots in Brooklyn, New York to interview her paternal grandmother and learns a great deal more about herself and her family than she ever expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Be and Be not Afraid

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spiderfire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiderfire/gifts).



"Come closer, child," my Nana whispers to me the knitting needles going clackety-clack between her still nimble fingers and I do as she asks. 

It's been a long time since I've been back to Brooklyn. We moved to the West Coast when I was a teenager, and for whatever reason, that was never made clear to me, my parents lost touch with my grandparents. 

My folks never explained why. Nana had come to visit us, sent letters and presents, but our return visits had been brief and stiffly formal. How I decided that this project of mine needed to be done I could not say why, but I left the kids with Nathan, packed my backs, along with a tape-recorder and flew back East. 

I decided to break it down into snapshots of her lives and so here I was back in Manhattan after I don't how long away on the West Coast. 

"Do you want more hot chocolate?"

"No, no, I don't think so."

Samantha nodded and the noise from her knitting needles went silent and in their absence, I could hear more readily the tick-tock of the big grandfather clock in the corner and more the sounds of the fall of rain on the shingle of her apartment roof. I asked if it was okay to start, and when she nodded I turned on the tape recorder.

"Were you really the first woman from our family to attend college?" I asked.

"It was, I remember that at fifteen I was already well on my way to settling on the career of being a journalist. Your parents, bless them, never did anything to actively discourage me. I was stubborn that's a trait that runs like blood in the woman of our family, don't you ever forget that, Sally."

"I won't, Nana." "I any case, the state of New York Board of Education decided to run an essay contest; don't rightly remember what the subject was about, but I do know that I wrote one that was good enough to be published, and from that moment I was hooked."

"Do you still have it?" I asked hopefully. I had heard of the essay from my own parents but had never actually seen it.

"No, not so much," Nana replied.

"Oh, that's okay," I said, and tried not to sound too disappointed.

Nana continued: "I joined the nascent journalism club the very next day." She paused, "well not, the very next day, I might have been distracted by seeing my name in black and white and wanting in framed and hung on the wall of a room." Fifteen, at fifteen it feels like that there's all the time in the world."

I nodded, my son, Elliot had just turned fifteen as well, and my daughter Eleanor was 10 but it sometimes felt as if she was ten going on 20."

"Where did you met Grandpa?"

"In college. We were both twenty about twenty-two years old and learning what it felt like to spread our wings. Your grandpa was the one who introduced me to playing tennis. He was from Maryland." He also was on the debate club, and held the dangerous and perhaps controversial opinion of allowing women to have a voice in politics."

 

"You were among the women who helped women get the vote?"

"I was," Nana nodded. It was a heady feeling, you know. I had gone from someone who merely reported the news to someone who actually made it happen."

"Did you burn your bra?" 

"Goodness, Dear, what do they teach kids these days?"

I was primed to answer that, but she hushed me.

"I don't think so, no. Marcus and I got married shortly after graduating from college and he went on to be a certified public accountant. and I did well as a journalist."

"What happened then?"

At 33, still the woman you see, but suddenly it seemed that priorities had to shift. That's when we had a kid. Greg. I was a rebel then and perhaps I still am. My own parents never approved of the fact that not only did I marry outside of my class' but outside of my social circle. Marcus was rich and some claimed that the only reason he rose up through the ranks was that his families connections with the college."

"Did it?" Wanting to hear the answer in the negative and in this, I was to be pleasantly surprised. "No way, not him. Marcus was a true visionary and a free thinker."  
At 45 just when your father was starting in high school, the world was heading into a crisis and Marcus was dealing with a crisis of a much more personal nature."

"Do you mean one of those mid-life kinds?" I asked. 

"In a way," she said, reaching up to brush the shoulder length white hair away from her lined but still beautiful face, sighing, "Sally, did Greg ever explain why we well, lost touch with each other?"  
"No, not really, Nana. Don't get me wrong it was something I always wondered about, and I would press him for answers but he never..."I trailed off shrugging helplessly, unable to fully express this seeming incongruity in my life. "It started in the 1940's especially about the time when the Second World War broke out and Marcus was drafted by the United States Army. For several months, sometimes it felt it was at the whim of postal service, but he would write and I would write back. One day, the letters stopped coming and then I received that one letter that every spouse dreads."

"Grandfather died in combat. My father never told me that!"

Samantha sniffed and offered me another plate of Russian teacakes. "Why am I not surprised. Greg, God love him, always did have trouble expressing his feelings and most especially when it came to the most powerful ones. In any case, the letter always begins with the lines 'we regret to inform you.. blah, blah, blah."

"How did it happen? I mean, if it's not too painful to tell."

"Paratrooper assignment deep in the heart of Nazi-controlled Germany. He was caught by a small recon troop of Nazi soldiers and shot and killed. His team was able to retrieve the bodies of their fallen comrades and find an abandoned barn where he lived long enough to contact a retrieval helicopter and but died upon arrival at their own camp."

"Oh, Nana!" I never knew."

"Greg made me promise not to tell you. He's a good man, but some promises are made to be broken. I just wish I had managed to tell you sooner than this."

I clenched my fists, thinking that my father, and perhaps my implicit decision my father, never told me what happened. I had heard other stories, but not this one. "Why, why, I could hit something...

"Don't be angry, I understand, but it's not their fault. Greg is a good boy, no a good man, but if he has a failing, is that could never cope with loss and grief and was never much given to being well, emotive."

"I don't want to let go of the anger," I replied stubbornly.

"I understand, Sally, really I do."

'Nana!"

Samantha nodded, and said, "Let me put it this way: At this point in my life, I think I'm going to take this time to set the record straight. It's been too long to let things left unsaid continued to simmer just another the surface. Sally, I should thank you for doing this, and perhaps we should continue this some more, but I'm feeling a bit peckish. Should we take a break for supper?"

I let my fists unclench and the tension that had unknowingly build up in my back and shoulder muscles slip away and smile come to my face unbidden. My stomach rumbled and I smile sheepishly. "All right. and then reached to push the off button on the tape recorder.

After supper of chicken alfredo and a green salad we continued with the interview.

At 67, that's when I used to travel a great deal more than I do no, I had a friend, Betty Jane and we would go to New Mexico, and elsewhere. I think it was to see who convinced me that I needed to see more of the world than just the hustle and bustle of Manhattan. She was right, but I, of course, required a great deal of convincing. I still have a few of the pieces of turquoise and silver jewelry."

"Thank God for people like Betty Jane," I enthused.

"Indeed," Samantha smiled, and it was a smile that would have done justice to the proverbial cat that ate the canary. She shipped her after supper sherry and thought about it. The silence stretched out comfortably between us. I smiled, too.

 

At almost 90 or more; well, Sammie shrugged, I've decided that I shall be and be not afraid." Am I just dreaming, counting the ways to where you are."

"Of course, and Nana, truth be told, I think I should be the one thanking you for doing this, for opening up and, well, everything, Impulsively, because taking a cue from my father, Greg both the men and the women in our family were never given much to displays of affection; reached over and gave Nana a hug and a kiss on the cheek. "I love you, Nana."

"Love you, too, Sally. Never forgot that. Promise me."

"I won't. I promise."


End file.
